hard nye

putting on my vodka parka

happy new year

new moon

thoroughly emo from watching new moon. it was so so good. i gladly contribute twenty-five dollars to the enterprise.

"you give me everything just by breathing."
oscar, now.

sabrina

if my parents tell me on my birthday that we are witches and that i have nascent magical powers, i think i will handle it rather well

modern living

thinking about, which is more ridiculous - life in the suburbs or life in LA?

la times

i've grappled with the sunday la times crossword all day to the point where i think i have negative brain cells

twilight

i'm watching twilight. i get it.
main character, lamegirl, as your lameself.

wild thing

my new name? turducken.

wild thing

i just want to stomp all over everything nowadays

tv time

i have been severely overdosing on television because i don't really want to see people.
jersey shore makes my life at least four times more excellent.

also, for all the shit i've given alvin and the chipmunks, i am secretly vaguely interested in watching the squeakquel.
i just really like the chipettes, okay

the gods must be crazy

there is some sort of hilarious show on the travel channel right now called - meet the natives: usa. they've taken five south pacific tribesmen and are giving them a trip around america. best show.

the burbs

i've been in my hometown for less than a day and i miss los angeles, where people look at each other with disapproval

holly days

last night i had a wonderful dinner with three danish boys.

this is why

thisiswhyyourefat.com has made me uncontrollably starving

good-byes

thinking about, my exchange boys, and when we were all strangers to one another.

maggiano's

my services include airport pick-up, tour of the city, clubbing until 5 am. Whenever you'll be in milan just call and an army of helpful and fun people will come and welcome you!!! - matteo

obligatory

i have no energy for these unending coffee dates and get-together-lunches

mind wandering

normally when you wake and sleep again, your sleep is shallow enough so that the situations are a little more relevant to your life and your conscious self has a little more control; you're more likely to act the way you would in the waking version and you hesitate in the same ways that your real lame self would. but they happenings are still a smidge fantastical and this is almost lucidity. however, these past mornings of my sleepings-in my dreams have been too realistic - to the point of boredom, menial tasks, sitting around and hashing out my real problems without any of the real resolves.

ex: finding overdue library books on my shelf

on foot

listening to my favorite song on repeat, going elsewhere

fireworks

you never know how earnestly you wanted something until you find yourself crying in some starbucks, obscuring yourself poorly behind a blue binder filled with notes on management, blurrily noticing the minutiae of tattered corners and fibrous cardboard. at this point you know everyone's seen you.

disappointment comes in very deep waves which exhaust your body. although borne originally of your low self-esteem, it somehow manages to offend your lost pride. you never know how excited you were until you're driving north at night and all of the headlights and tail lights and each of the stoplights golights and slowlights are exploding in wet dazzling colored starbursts

the grinch

seeing as i have, as of this hour, been rejected from everything i have applied for and really wanted, i have confirmed my suspicion that i am not fit for work and, consequently, will be moving to taiwan shortly after graduation to be a pop star.

yelp

according to yelp, i am funnier than i am useful, but more useful than i am cool. i am, not that cool.

have yourself

i can't wait for finals to be over, to spend all my time watching netflix and sitting in starbucks like a christmas lard.

naustalgia

i would like to go to a holiday choral performance

lucia

still frustrated that i missed the swedish christmas fair on sunday

a chorus line

"While A Chorus Line had remarkably little dancing, especially for a show about dancers, it could be said that the entire show was danced: its performers kept moving back and forth in different patterns through the depth of the stage, forever splintering and then reconstituting their chorus line. It was as if the company were one giant, undulating organism forever torn between the shadows of the wings and the footlights down front."

have you ever heard such an exaggerated and delusional brouhaha over people stepping out of line, gabbing a few words, and stepping back in line

pickles

who knows you whom you don't know thems?

morning

firefighters outside my window, five feet away from me. me in my robe, checking my e-mail. blinds open. awkward.

tv time

watching extreme dr. 90210 just almost made me spit ramen all over myself

for looking at

one of my favorite people in the world in one of my favorite places

one of the most beautiful girls i've ever seen

ideal town

animals i want to see

best play i have ever seen

thing i want to own

!

gogol's use of exclamations is my favorite.

miss saigon

the things that you say are like the breadcrumbs that you leave, so that when you forget who you are, you can follow the trail back.

kim

i've decided that miss saigon is my favorite musical and i've never even seen it

i would go back in time to watch it

blurry

really actually going blind, i think

chastisement

got in trouble today with the father for not checking my tire pressure. good thing you didn't get your tires rotated. the back tires are low on air! you can't wait until the air pressure light comes on. then it's too late! you're supposed to do it every month. i told you to check. did you see those tires? go out and look at them! see how it's worn here? feel the tread. now feel the tread on the front tires. can you tell the difference? bad dog!

endless process

backing up my computer files.

bastion of responsibility.

armstrong

does my playing louis on my laptop affect my dog's dreams?

is she trotting down new orleans, sniffing lamp posts and discarded beads, thinking about beignets? whimpers at a couple sharing a plate of crayfish. listens to a wizened old trumpet player streetside?

a kiss to build a dream on

really actually going face blind, i think

paper moon

do you feel antsy? i feel like i can't sit still. i can't read and i can't sleep. i want to walk around in the dark and have a garden party.

louis armstrong - a kiss to build a dream on

hgtv

i'm actually disturbed that HGtv is re-running christmas decorating episodes that i KNOW i watched last year

is there no artistic integrity left

space

OMG e-mail hiatus has resulted in mountains upon mountains of e-mail

all i want for christmas is a highly visible public figure who is a positive role model for the physically disabled. michael j fox does not count.

i will also accept tickets to the taylor swift concert.

vh1

behind the music 50 cent so good

legend

me: mom, do you know the story of thanksgiving?

mom: ...

mom: ...

mom: i just make the turkey every year.

mom: {after some thought} the pilgrims were very hungry because the winter was very cold. and then many turkeys flew in the sky and the pilgrims ate them and didn't die.

me: ...

thanksgiving

i am thankful for the opportunity to pretend to be julia stiles this year

velcro

we have a bad dog in our midst

one day

12 am - panda express, 12 pm the grove, lost souls cafe, bradbury building, the smell, attempt to find wolf mural in arts district, 1.5 hour drive home, dinner with parents, ralphs thanksgiving grocery shopping, starbucks, dream cafe hookah, catch up with brother, 12 am - birthdayphonechat with piggy chen

istanbul

on occasion, i have these online conversations with this turkish man i met in istanbul.

Valerie

i'm good!

i have no class today

11:21Aybars

:)

it must be something good for you :):):

11:22Valerie

ahaha yeah it is

11:23Aybars

:)

11:23Valerie

what's new in your life?

11:23Aybars

nothing new

still single

:)

what about you

did you get married with baby :)

Valerie

ahahaha no not yet

i don't want to get married until i'm 30

11:24Aybars

:DS

so you ahev more 12 years to get married

:)

toil and trubble

drinking airborne is a lot like being a witch and drinking out of your cauldron. my cup of airborne is sizzling next to me and the foamy bubbles sit on the surface, fat, unperturbed, yellow. i hope i am transfigured.

paparazzi

I am a sick man . . . An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts.

today i feel unhappy with my self.

i find that when i feel unhappy, it is usually best to go to bed. everything is more reasonable in the morning. but i also feel too restless to sleep and too shaky from being so hung over because i drank half a bottle of vodka.

i should eat less food and watch videos of lady gaga instead. the scene in the paparazzi video where the body is being examined reminds me of hard, during the last set when they had a bunch of monster doctors operating on an alien corpse. there was an ominous heartbeat track playing and lots of lound noises, sharp objects, bits flying around. on one level, i knew it was really scary. on another level, i was in no state to care.

no more vodka

being hung over makes me feel more like an animal. breathing is so labored.

fred 62

last night's nightcap turned into rounds of vodka shots. oh my life.

i see

taylor swift -

sparks fly

rituals

in the morning i am an indecisive hermit crab

. . .

?!!??!?!!?!?

hair

thinking about, how i would like to have been a hippie in the 60s in a very colorful bus

i once kissed a boy who was on lsd but i think this is a poor approximation

november seventeen christmas at starbucks

i cannot handle the holiday window decorations at starbucks.

"I wish GROWN UPS could remember being KIDS"

"I wish for a SNOW DAY"

"I wish EVERYONE could see how much we all have in COMMON"

these nauseating sentiments, coupled with my inability to watch where the wild things are and the neverending story, prove that i, indeed, do not remember being a kid, if i, apparently, ever was one at all

i used to be friends with

China is beautiful, no matter the nonstop construction, destruction, etc. There is hope for such a nation as this. Tonight as our team met after our awesome showers (praise God for those, omg), we planned to meet for 10 minutes. But we started to worship and God was just moving on our hearts and definitely all around us. We began to pray and share visions he was giving us. Holy spirit was so thick in that place, I felt like he had wet the floors and covered us with thick grace. He was giving us grace to walk freely into his presence, throwing off our shame and sin, and being washed in his pure joyful presence. The room was seriously oozing with glory and surrounded by angels.

regal horned lizard

have you ever been so mad at someone, that you wished that you could build up the pressure in your eyes to pop a blood vessel and squirt blood on her?

i was up until four am compensating for the raging incompetence of others

i confronted her, that dirty scoundrel. she kept lying to me and blinking her eyes (they say that the more a person blinks, the more untrustworthy she is) and i couldn't decide which was making me more angry.

cemex

love love love my new headphones. sound comes out of both sides. and it's like wearing a comfortable helmet.

hate my group project. group projects never fail to remind me of how much i hate other people.

tak for hygge

Van Buren House

Holger Danskes Vej

Chalfonte

Van buren house was the first room that ever felt like it was really mine. it was the first time i'd lived surrounded by colored walls. it had a microwave and a baby fridge and built-in bookshelves and a walk-in closet. Holger danskes vej was the first dorm i lived in. i would crank up the heater all the way all the time so that it was a terrarium. the windows were double-paned and the interstice was the best refrigerator. it kept drinks colder and safer than leaving them in the shared kitchen would. Chalfonte is my new home. i like the high ceilings and the new regolit very much.

space 15 twenty

can't stop listening to

animal collective - fireworks

thinking about

the miraculous power of blankets to stay warm without you

regolit

can't wait for my headphones to come in the mail

zeitgeist

who is having a horrible couple of days

musical theater workshop

auditions hubbub. today i had no patience for actors.

bad romance

love lady gaga's new video

everquest

a souffle i had in shanghai two years ago

sam anderson

My eating habits shifted very suddenly, seven years ago, because of the transcendent cuteness of my wienerdog—his sweet breath and soft fur and perfectly symmetrical ears; his expressive little huffs and grunts; his determination to keep me warm whenever I took a nap. Eventually, my love for him grew so powerful that it spread, like a tidal wave of snuggles, to cover the entire animal kingdom.

crocodile tears

i realized, in a very twisted sort of a day last week, that i can make myself cry just by assuming cry face. is this muscle memory?

jumping class

this is a perfect evening at urth.

the music is good. i think it was madame butterfly when i came in and then snorah jones.

free sample of pumpkin pie. so so good. and the pumpkin pie man chatted with me about how he had never had pumpkin pie before this year because they don't eat it in mexico city and how he has discovered that he loves pumpkin pie. he's the best.

there's no one here. no babies, no brunching parentals. it's only 5 and it's nighttime. the lights are glowy.

i'm not in class and it feels so so good.

food diary

the barista working the bar at starbucks right now announces drinks like a banshee announcing death!

chatty kathy from teach for america is here again. i feel like she is becoming some minor comic-relief character in my life movie. i hear her effervesce education! and poverty! every so often and the words float into the air and pop with wafts of pink perfume.

i am enjoying starbucks' pasta salad with white chicken and salami, which i am consuming for purely gluttonous purposes.

pumpkin spice

this morning a man of unidentified national origin was whistling Summertime on his way into starbucks

his ladyfriend shook cinnamon and sugar onto her drink with such awkwardness and confusion that she looked like a visiting alien in a borrowed human body

perceived mumbling

Modern spoken Danish has gained a reputation as being exceptionally difficult for foreigners to understand and master. The nine Danish vowels represent sixteen different sounds and most of the consonants are unvoiced. A unique feature is the 'stod', the glottal stop, used to distinguish between several homonyms and words. The Danes also tend to drop inflectional endings, and this perceived mumbling, even in formal standard Danish, may present problems to those learning the language.

intelligentsia

yesterday i had the most delightful, awe-inspiring snack time at dusk at intelligentsia.

the perfect hot mocha, thick on your tongue, the most buttery chocolate layered cookie topped with oozing caramel and crunchy grains of salt.

it was a graying light when it began and nighttime when it ended

horror and personal distress impending

If I had a blackout, does that mean I should stop drinking altogether?
If you would seriously ask this question after having just one alcoholic blackout, your question itself is proof positive that you have a serious drinking problem. You are in the grip of an addiction that is distorting your ability to reason about your use of alcohol. Any further use of alcohol, ever, places you at high risk of having future blackouts and suffering progressively worse patterns of horror and personal distress related to alcohol.

latin hispanic chicano what

i really need mexican food or paella. oblige me?

diversity in the american broadway musical

my teacher just used the phrase "indian giver" and i am highly amused

grain

thinking about, van buren house

acquirings

i need new headphones. i have two sets of faulty ones.

one hurts my ear and the other is deaf in an ear.

i also need more fake eyelashes. i have two sets of faulty ones attached to my fayce.

so anti-climactic.

rave

hhm was good. light shows. candy. deadmau5. tootoo many cigarettes. happy happy.

in the beer garden an asian girl dressed as raggedy ann gave me a menthol cigarette and a dollar for two of my green glowing bracelets. i just couldn't get over how cute she was.

the mythical

why do girls like mermaids?

jackets scarves boots

going to see how many times today i have to listen to people gripe about the weather

on that boring note, all of my scandinavian weather conditioning is gone and i am so cold.

flyttet

this blog will be moved in its entirety shortly

sakura

tonight i learned how to say cherry blossom festival in danish.

just keeping the dream alive.

whether weather

it was very windy today, from what i observed from inside my car.

veritable hurricane. palm fronds all over the street!

teach for america

the TFA interviewer next to me at starbucks, gab gab gab. who's the one being interviewed here?
there's a lot of explaining to do about signing two years of your life away.
interview over. immediately to the phone to gab.

no missed opportunities here.

hate turned love

new love - justified text.

more caffeinated heartbeat, pleas-s-s-e.

rewards for works

if i finish my escape application today, i may go to all my favorite stores.

youngness

i do not claim to have any sympathy for children or the supposed sanctity of childhood but i would like to be a little boy for a day

the drive north

i wonder how far people go to babble

my face

do you too feel sad when you have to take off your makeup at the end of the day and be just you 

valerie records

i am the wild thing

pom

thinking about getting really drunk and working out. clearly the only way to trick myself into exercise.

pengar

europe, american college student playground

glamor monster

last night i realized i was dreaming

i was dying. and terrified to see if there would be anything after.

there was. and i was immensely relieved. and i was definitely in heaven, not hell. but what does it matter? because this is a dream.

heaven was a dark cornfield. with a lit house on the faraway hill.

diversity in the american broadway musical

i've been watching clips of west side story on youtube and i am not impressed. would rather watch romeo+juliet, even with claire danes' terrible shakespearean.

drinks sprite

i'm obsessed with

Maskinen - Segertåget

usb emily

the boy sitting behind me today in video game class was very skillfully drawing a figure with the biggest boobs i have ever seen

i also watched the entirety of The Last Lecture for the first time. i loved it, but i don't think it was supposed to overwhelm me with a sense of futility.

ground zero

i brought my panini into gz cafe and am now inadvertently sitting in on a bluegrass class. i now have a pumpkin milkshake. and banjo.

nachalo

find me at psychobabble. 2:30

uffie

well i just feel terrible

bewitched, bothered, and bewildered

George Gershwin died today, but I don't have to believe it if I don't want to.

aeroplane over the sea

ohhh wtf i don't remember anything again. my hair smells like boy i suspect foul play.

gde krasnaya ploshad

sugar and caffeine my body is going into shock

see what i wanna see

sun shining on my driving arm; today i felt young

game designers

i can't find the bugs. what is wrong with my code? ... i can't read my code...

- lenny, despairing over gray, not rainbow, digital teapot

love, sex, and glock

uffie - pop the glock

up and down elevators

last night i was in an elevator going down and when the doors opened it was another open elevator and i walked in and bumped into two friends

pacifico

today in the new cinema building i watched a girl nonchalantly flip through a facebook album of someone's photos from an African village as she discussed halloween costumes

day of misery has begun

how much annoying can you pack in one day? let's find out.

however, it's easier to handle emotionally when you see it coming.

i wish it were beach weather and that i were in santa monica. now.

iever really like the danishes at starbucks. they are very satisfying.

looks like rain. weather.com says so.

the lives of perfect creatures

take me stargazing, please

tomorrow is going to be a so-so-bad day and it's only thirty-five minutes away.

i will also settle for a trip to the outdoors with a metal detector

nobody wants to hear about your dreams

matter-of-fact and not scary when it happened but creepy in retrospect.

a mysterious, highly-intelligent man who is very upset about something (never defined) and leaving angry blocks of text in blue graffiti on the walls of the city. he monitors the actions of people he knows because he has dolls of all these people that do what their respective person is doing. he has an accomplice, an asian girl, sultry bond-girl type. (she never makes an appearance - i only knew her by her doll form, an asian barbie with two faces.) the man chastises the girl for not accomplishing her task - she says she couldn't imagine manipulating another girl.

some detective-type and i are in a warehouse - very bright and clean. the detective believes there is another graffiti incident somewhere in the warehouse. i never would have guessed there would be anything in this warehouse. someone is stacking chairs on top of each other to try to gain access to the graffiti, which is very high up on the wall.

umbrella

on the 5 today i looked in my rear view mirror and realized there was a police car right behind me. i looked at my odometer and i was shockingly doing a perfect 65. i felt glad that the people around me had had the foresight to slow down since i certainly never would have noticed the need on my own. the police car fell back and was a silent predator in a reef of well-behaved fishes, each trying to be less conspicuous than its neighbors. the orca finally picked its red fish and turned on its bloody bells.

my mama took me boot shopping because she loves me. we had dinner at a bbq joint, where she repeatedly commented that her pulled pork should be taken home and made into fried rice. this little girl at the table next to us was reading her tiger beat with selena gomez at the table. what is it like to know that you've been made into a child star specifically to corner the latino dollar? after dinner, the barista at the starbucks bar kept announcing my drinks with a very interesting whine in my name, valerie, two lattes, valerie, valerie

my vanilla latte was horrible. no foam, all syrup.

after three weeks with kittens, and then coming home to missy, i find that no one will ever love me the way my dog does. cat love is very tangible but it just can't compare. miss missy was elated to see me and collapsed her now-larger body next to my now-larger body on the couch. put her head in my lap with a sigh. she follows me around the house and doesn't get annoyed even though i've just gone up and down the stairs five times in a row. she finds me if i go to the bathroom and she sleeps and wakes with me. i am nice in return because i throw my jeans on the floor specifically so that she can sleep on them as she likes to do.

lauren studios

from the people who took my graduation photos :

We strongly recommend retouching on all prints 5x7 or larger. Remember, the images you are viewing are significantly smaller than your finished portrait. All imperfections will be magnified.

you are ugly.

usa pavilion

what up, life?

mickey & judy

i'm just going to have to acquire this

http://www.amazon.com/Judy-Garland-Mickey-Rooney-Collection/dp/B0000033IA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1255190138&sr=1-1

fly fly

thinking about leaving the country in more instances than one. or two. or three.

louis poulsen

the problem with the lamp fetish is that there really is no reasonable electrical or tasteful way to collect and display all the specimens you would like to appropriate.

enjoyed this

http://emag.louispoulsen.com/1L4a48e5a4669f0012.cde

premonition

yesterday i had a resplendent vision of my future mediocrity

you are a woman of culture

studying abroad = semester course in point-and-click photography

evolution

rooibos tea lattes are the new hazelnut lattes

porgy and bess

i am losing my imagination and i can't figure out whether it is because i am growing old or because i am becoming more content with my real life

now in retrospect

when i look back on my youngness, i will think of driving miles and miles to spend too much money on something as ubiquitous as coffee or gelato, something as scarce as good coffee or good gelato; lounging every day on grungy sunken couches next to hipsters wearing too many layers; running stale yellow lights; meeting strangers off the internet; drinking so much caffeine that in class i am something hopping and alive, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed;

in the morning, you only get bad e-mails because all your friends are asleep and all the worker ants are working. this morning i saw many straight-laced straight-faced men walking on wilshire in suits walking to their works. the art in psychobabble has changed. instead of glitter-glue cartoons, now objectively ugly paintings of some incan (A Peruvian in Edinbugh) and angels and islands. i am studying russian, listening to swedish rap, reminding myself of danish equivalents. there was an attractive boy driving on my right this morning. when i looked at him, he looked away.

cha-ching

it is Actually cold now. i want to go boot shopping yes yes yes. flat boots, cowboy & over-the-knee.

william

wordsworth so loquacious

enunciate

I could have a mansion on the hill
I could lease a villa in Seville
But it wouldn't be as nice as a summer in Ohio

Need someone to hide easter eggs in my apartment when im not home

"I need someone to hide easter eggs in my apt when i am not there ! They are small and filled with candy! I would like to find them myself on sunday! I am willing to pay! Serious inquiries only!"

how time works

every time i turn around it's seven o-clock. and i have things to do-o. o .

miaow

kittens playing with my eyelash curler. this is maybe dirty.

tilt your head a little this way

senior yearbook photo today. how do you prefer to be preserved for posterity?

fairfax

every grownup hates the neverending story - yt

psychobabble

i came here for raspberry mocha, the best raspberry mocha in town. i came here and no raspberry. my iced mocha, however, still tastes like heaven and you can (i can) tell that it begs for raspberry.

littlest pet shop

cat litter in my shoes because the kittens use them as boats

idleness

The ukulele is the sound of not working.

new pastime

looking at pictures of pancakes from the griddle

green grass grows

grass is so much more fascinating when it grows in a cuppy on your desk

glee

parmer he likes the singing so happy

baby gumm

the other night as i was falling asleep i saw a fox with a slice of triangular-prism watermelon for a face. i saw after that, a succession of fantastical and iimpossible foxes

way down yonder

have you ever felt like a lousy performer with paralyzing stage fright, an awfully unimaginative video game designer, and a business person more inept than the first two combined? have you ever felt like you're not particularly good at anything and that you won't do much before you die? have you ever felt like your closest are so much more talented than you are and destined for better things and you're a good-for-nothing drifter? yeah, something like that.

i cycle cph

still pining over old photos. also, i feel like painting. i don't think i have my paints in this new apartment.

status dying

pining through old photos, breathing through half a nose, feeling bleak about life, coughing

flu 2009

don't come near. infe-ctious.

leave it to beaver

After all, why should I
take the blame for these mechanical imperfections, with
which all of us must contend.

my jolly giant

Dinnerplates

Diminutive

september sixth

my father is an emotionally distant man,

she wolf

we like rihanna, but we love shakira.

sludge drinks for breakfast

on thursday morning in class i experienced something i have always wanted to try - a pepsi / coke challenge. we had an unlabeled liter each of coca-cola, rc cola, and pepsi and were invited to try a sample of each and attempt to identify them by flavor alone. i have always preferred coke to pepsi. and rc...never touch the stuff. generic is for the cheap. it turns out that i actually can't tell the difference between any of them. all of my guesses were wrong. what's more is that when unlabeled, these drinks just look like gloogy plastic bottles of brown goop and i was disgusted by all of them. they all tasted bad. and i love coke.

blah humbug

i'm in a terrible mood, one that is immune to both gelato and television

let's make it happen

children seeking attention have found creative ways to simulate haemolacriatic symptoms

gerber

tonight someone in my video game class definitely smelled like baby food

the odyssey

The reality of things is that you will inevitably leave your home for two weeks and return to find that everyone thinks you are dead and the sunflowers you lovingly raised from seed have gone and bloomed withoutyou.

i have a very special place in my heart for the smell of sunflowers. it is very subtle and few people know it.

fugitive

fell asleep on yuliya's bed with limewire on, fed the entire world my documents for late night hours

waiting for the feds to sue me for the big bucks

cash monay

it's been an expensive month.

good thing i had a combined income of $1.26 from money i've found

kipnis

you can't snap your fingers OR whistle? what were you doing between the ages of six and twelve, may i ask?

mrs. tuckersman

i am currently reading doctorow's ragtime, which i bought from a thrift store on fasanvej while in denmark. i was reading it between classes today on campus when i pulled a strand of blonde hair out of it.

normandie

new apartment

smells like wet dog

sticky carpets

strangers on the street can look into my bedroom

panda express in the fridge

no furniture in living room

love it

going back to school

when left to my own devices, mcdonald's

calculations

my life has improved ten-fold since ending my work season.

i made 2,545.60 this summer, 2,268.55 after taxes.

time to see the world.

swift

the video for you belong with me is really cute

high school musical

had lunch with my junior prom date,

dinner with my senior prom date

so fond of them both

followed by reunion with other high school peers at florentine's. i think we've all grown up a bit, no? it's been

three years.

in san diego tomorrow with brother, future sister. sun, sand.

vacation

IN VEGAS. we were upgraded to a penthouse. living the life. tryst tonight.

hgtv

deserving design with vern yip. sooo good. highly recommend.

i love seeing this frosty asian man make people happy.

bummed about perseid

bummed about not being able to see the meteor shower tonight. i laid out in the backyard rolled in a blanket and kept my eyes open until my contacts dried out and i saw things wiggling and every star seemed to move sort of a little if you stared at it long enough. and i got a mosquito bite on my toe.

monster hospital

i thought i had become fully re-settled in america until i realized that quarters still feel strange in my hand.

Once in Ordos

my father, climbing a hill after a storm, inadvertently

entered the base of a rainbow - the

rarest

occurence! - and found himself

in colored air, in a play of light

as if in paradise. He took one more step - and left paradise.

they are always too slight.

isbjørn

shit let's go to solvang

declaration

i would like to be called froggy

digitalism

drunkkkk. my cocker spaniel will sleep with me on my bed.

grand 11:45-20:15

i really don't want to go to work today. but i really want to make some cash money so i can get away.

judy garland - life is just a bowl of cherries

greene&greene

take me to the gamble house!

indeed

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_is_Valerie_Chen

found my name

had dinner with brother last night, discovered that my parents named me after the character on Family Ties. except that character is definitely named Mallory, not valerie.

dreamwalking

two days ago i drove home from downtown los angeles at seven am, arrived at seven thirty, and let myself sleep for an hour and a half before i had to get up and go to work.

i was looking through some sort of box and found a folded rectangular piece of plastic with deep scalloped edges all around. it was purple and when i unfolded it i recognized it as a starfish and was sure to keep its mouth submerged in water.

i looked through another box and found an osprey at the bottom lying on its side. it had a white head with black markings, a great black beak and black tongue. (i recognized it as an osprey in my dream and i just google imaged osprey and that is exactly exactly what i saw in the dream.) i asked it if wanted to be released and it nodded. i released it and soon its osprey wife had arrived to meet it.

i was on a platform with a family of orangutans. suddenly, the platform was in freefall, akin to a falling elevator, but i wasn't scared at all - it was exhilarating. the orangutans were hooting and dancing. suddenly i was seeing everything from an eagle-eye, swooping camera point-of-view and i could see the orangutans and an entire rainforest and i could hear the chorus of birds and music accompanying a joyous rainforest.

and then i woke up and went to work.

work all day

realized that my favorite thing about my job is my outfit. ridiculous.

yesterday, a man shook my hand and thanked me for watching over his daughter. i liked this so much.

huh

it was a bit strange for me to clean my room today, find an old diary, and read this on the first page:

hanzismatter.com

keith: checked out the website loveit<3thankyou

i DEFINITELY saw this when i was in arlanda in april, though i just thought it was kind of weird and didn't think about it too much at the time!

Arrivals Sign at Stockholm Arlanda Airport

from: Johan
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 9:41 PM
subject: Look at this Arrivals sign from Sweden

This is from Arlanda, Stockholm's international airport. They have a lot of these signs.

In Sweden, we pride ourselves on being way better than everybody else, by the way.

Johan, Sweden



It appears manufacturer of the sign did not have correct language and fonts pack installed. Instead of displaying 到達 (arrivals), the second character showed up as a rectangular box.

yuLike

last night during dinner my mom was telling me about how floods were common when she was growing up. if there was a storm, her elementary school, which was on the mountain top, would send all the kids home. parents didn't panic back then the way they do now. the kids would all link arms and climb down and back home to town. they would wade through knee-deep water, surrounded by floating radishes, dead wild pigs, and dead chickens washed down the mountain.

she once had a dream as a young child of an enormous flood flushing the town and a giant carousel descending from the sky and lifting all the children away.

harry potter

was so good! i was shocked! it was very thrilling and well-paced and was so pleasing that i was somehow able to forgive the horrendous child acting. the adults were excellent per usual but ginny weasley needed to be kicked off screen because i couldn't stop snort-laughing at her dead lines and made-of-wood body. hermione and ron were not so good as well, but as long as ron keeps making that face he always makes then i am happy. love stories were lame and forced, but they were similarly annoying in the book. 2.5 hours sped by & i was thoroughly entertained.

also really enticed by the where the wild things are trailer.

labor

today i decided that i am so over my job

presents

all i want is someone who is willing to give me massages like all the time

anaheim ink

aside from my many other serious work roles, i am a silent but cold-hearted tattoo critic. given the total surface area of flesh i observe on a daily basis, i have come to the conclusion that the world is in a very serious need of a tattoo shop with artists [native to] and [skilled in] writing in chinese. and i go as far as to specify, writing in traditional characters. i have seen countless glaringly botched tattoos in chinese. they are almost always horribly distorted - top or bottom heavy, biased to the left or right side. the spacing is not even. don't people just blow these things up on a xerox machine and trace them? i don't understand these rookie mistakes. let's just certify a class of people who know what they are doing and make everyone else's life easier.

people get chinese tattoos basically because they look cool. so they might as well get traditional, which is more intricate than the uh yeah simplified characters. but for some reason simplified seems to be the preferred system of the crappy tattooers. traditional is better. i don't just say this because it's the writing system i learned. the traditional character LOVE, which is popular, actually has the chinese character for HEART inside of it. simplified cuts this out. love without the heart. not as good. apply so on and so forth.

in the end, why would you get a tattoo in chinese on your body when you probably wouldn't permanently ink it onto yourself in english? because it would make you look dumb? that is how i feel when i look at you. on the rare occasions in which i can actually read the characters. i saw a man today who had PIG written on his arm in big bold chinese. i couldn't stop looking at it. he definitely wouldn't have done that in english. more acceptable to embarass yourself in front of a smaller segment of the population? also, how does it feel to not be able to read your own tattoo but to know that certain strangers on the street can? but if you're going to do it, at least get them done right. i saw a tattoo of LOVE the other day that was missing the top stroke so the tattoo wasn't technically of any existing character in the chinese language. how awkward.

doppelgänger

i met a small chubby pale boy today named jake who showed me his secret handshake which consisted of drumming on his belly. he told me that i reminded him of mulan, whom he met at goofy's kitchen. he said that she said that her favorite color is blue. i very much wish i could be mulan in goofy's kitchen.

i also met his small brother logan, whose hands were prune-ier from swimming than any prune-y swimming hands i have ever seen. they belonged to an oldest man.

heinz

just saw a heinz ketchup commercial of a germinating seed that grows into a tomato plant and sprouts a ketchup bottle. it's captivating.

can't wait for toddlers&tiaras on tlc.

kats birthday

fireworks make my heart so fast

here and here

temporary conclusion: best songs on here,here,andhere are going away and one sail, one sea

99 ranch

highlights from grocery shopping with my mother

- she feels my arm. "you're a pig. but at least i hear they're smart."

- comparing pickle labels to make sure to buy the pickles from taiwan, not china

- "just marry someone who is stupid and nice and will follow you around and listen to what you say"

- i'm driving, she is in the back seat. i hear, "woof! woof! it's hot! woof woof!"

one sail, one sea

mexico was one hundred and seven degrees hot and eighty percent humid. the weather was absolutely rabid. i knew that there are very beautiful beaches in the baja area, but i didn't realize that these places are basically like the tropics. chunks of rainforest-like areas. we went to cabo san lucas, mazatlán, puerto vallarta. so so beautiful the places. i enjoyed talking to the people i met there, despite at times accidently blurting out yes and no in danish instead of spanish. my mother somehow managed to bump into two of her customers on the boulevard in puerto vallarta. they said, the world is really too small.

27 dresses

on weather: stepping out into the current heat is like being punched on the face. it is the type of weather for the opening of any good fiction story, where men loll about, irritable and pugnacious, and water drips off of everything. it's the type of weather that would make bridesmaid dress shopping, an activity i should enjoy because i enjoy buying unnecessary clothing, miserable. i spent a july afternoon climbing in and out of crumpled towers of satin intended for a january wedding. i sweated into expensive-only-because-of-the-weddingpremium fabric and left a graveyard of unflattering dresses. and there is something very gone with the wind in that itself.

going away

small hitch in travel plans...

where the hell is my passport?

ricfan09

saw up with travis - thoroughly enjoyed the film. it was filled with enough cute to make my week.

Let me tell you, on the Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters ride there is a CM who is just great. His name is Ric and he makes me believe in the magic of Disneyland everytime I see him. He is always telling stories, making funny jokes, and letting people do things most cast members wouldn't ever bother with. This guy is bound to be the next Maynard. He is so helpful too. So next time you're in Tomorrowland, look for Ric on the Astro Blasters, he'll make your day. MAYNARD WATCH OUT!
REPORTED: RicFan06 22 MAY 06

$$$

i liked when shopping in south coast plaza yesterday i was in marni, where an item of clothing ranges from $1000-$2000, and my mother kept proclaiming loudly that the store looked like a thrift shop and how weird it was that there was only one of each item. even better was when she told the michael kors saleswoman that the purse the woman was hawking looked like a laundry bag.

luna

i would be more satisfied if the moon looked more like a place

sbc

absolutely can't wait to see bruno. can it come out now?

new phone

after losing my cell phone in tivoli, i came home and acquired a replacement - same species as the one i had before. since then i have been very diligently teaching the new twin's predictive texting function all of the curse words that i use in my classy daily conversations, which its predecessor had already learned and submissively proffered in its collective word bank. now when i decide that the word boobs or bullshit or fucker needs to be part of my cell phone's vocabulary, i feel somewhat like i am corrupting a child.

here, here, and here

after letting the new album sink in, my conclusion:

6 to 4

ratio of listenable songs to skippers

largely unremarkable, but i accept it. i can't decide which is my favorite song. but worst song on the disc? BORED OF YOUR LOVE. the band is not called man&dia. thanks.

honglaowai

i am so so so exhausted from work that tonight i am not taking my dog on our 11 pm walk. i feel like my body is melting and floating away from me. so my mother recently discovered youtube. when i got home from work we listened to videos of taiwanese oldies. and then we found a video of this old, extremely famous taiwanese song about the merits of hard work sung by an american who must be on crack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq6SP9YxBGQ&feature=channel_page

my mom was absolutely pissing herself. i concur. it is pretty goddamn funny.

i do believe in fairies

last night i had dinner with a friend of eight years and an australian friend i have not seen in more than three. today i made two children genuinely happy with silly trinkets i stole from behind front desk. after work drove home with basshunter, louis armstrong, and randy newman in my car and with my favorite fireworks in the world swelling upwards and bursting outwards and sizzling downwards above me. felt the rare feeling of feeling as lucky as i actually am. i do all of my best feeling in the car. in my rearview mirror, big goldflashing sparkles rained down on the city.

electric daisy

i had a beyond incredible time at Edc last night. i hope yuliya enjoyed her phone call.

he is a raver. you met him at a rave. he is not for you.

- khenkel, mama bear

what is character

this late afternoon the lady at the estee lauder counter who was matching foundation to my skin tried to tell me that scars give a person

character.

just somehow i knew she was going to say that. i remain unconvinced. i might have smacked her had she not had a carwreckgash on her face.

battered manatee in speedboat world.

green thumb

fourteen of my sunflowers have sprouted.

return to oz

i would go back to copenhagen to get married at frederiksborg slot or to go to distortion.

Neutered Chiwhawha, black & white (Pomona)

NEAR FAIRPLEX
Found wandering in the street.
Can't make room to house chiwhawha.
please call ASAP

how many toys are in your box

tonight - first time going to the park in five+ months. after spending so much time becoming accustomed to new faces, it was very nice to see so many old faces again. the new fireworks show is not so good as the previous, but i admit that it made me cry nonetheless. met a boy at space named sven who is not swedish.

peopledon'tdancenomoretheyjuststandtherelikethis

theycrosstheirarmsandstareyoudown

anddrinkandmoananddiss

i have hot macchiato, cold feet

five audits in the five days that i've been back at work. this time passed this one on the first try. have befriended some maintenance guys and watched the most glorious fireworks in the world for the past two nights.

on my way home tonight i indulged in starbucks part two of the day. ran into an old acquaintance, met his beautiful new wife and truly adorable three-month-old baby. goodness. the entire episode made me want to jump into my car, turn up the music obscenely loud, drive haphazardly, and take lots of drugs.

coqui

after extensive googling, i have come to the conclusion that you can't attain and keep a coqui as a pet. this breaks my heart. i would take such good care of it.

unrelated: i like this girl a lot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFLn_J-a4vg&feature=related

what is summer

conclusion: the vanilla latte from starbucks that i spoiled myself with on the way home from work today far surpassed any coffee-based drink that i purchased throughout the whole of my stay in denmark. and cost three times less. i don't think i could have been any more satisfied with that beverage.

since coming home i've had a hard time distinguishing what feels more like a dream - being back, or the months that i spent away. i'm slowly becoming reacquainted with my world. i've gotten lost more times than i can count - looking for van buren house where i lived last year, navigating my way around cerritos, wandering around stupidly at work. getting back in my car was the shock of my life - it seemed too powerful and unnecessary. just me in this massive vehicle when all i needed for so long was a frame on two wheels. too powerful and too fast - hurtling deathtrap that i crawl the streets in.

plans for this summer...workworkwork. work is exhausting, consumes my days, and confuses me because i don't even do anything. going back to work has been daunting. so many new faces. for some reason i can never meet new people without acting mousier or ballsier than i really am. i failed an audit my first day back, passed another the next, only to fail another today. getting back into the swing of things has been slow goings.

i despise and love my job.

i hate being bored but i like that it's a physical job that makes me feel strong. and useful. unproven as of yet. i am absolutely enraged that through a hiring glitch newhires are being paid a dollar fifty more per hour than i am and that management does not care to do anything about it besides chastise us for being angry.

neverland pool is exactly the fantasyland i would dream of for myself. blue glowing, calm pool, trees strung with twinkling, the most enchanting chirping frogsong, fireworks exploding overhead, and inviting-looking buildings with glowing, beckoning windows. i am happiest there at night. miserable by day, drowning in dirty towels and obliged to throw away other people's garbage.

however, i do enjoy watching happy families, smiling parents with their gleefulsmallchildren. they all act the same and i like it.

i swear there is a very specific smell that my car has only when i climb into it late at night in the cast parking lots. it is a cold, misty smell and it reminds now of various memories from different sets of times and people, same place. i enjoy driving home with only my leftalmosthand, just to prove that i can. vanilla latte is like silk in my mouth.

my dog sleeps in my room by my bed. she doesn't prefer this room because it is usually too hot and bright. but she likes me.

AAR

i saw the all-american rejects video for gives you hell for the billionth time on vh1 this morning and was bitching about it in my head (this video is extraordinarily old, who's sleeping with who to get this still played, etc) when i realized that the blurred-out beer that they're drinking is tuborg. and then it was all okay.

fuckers

received news that after my departure people from my dorm destroyed my bike.

they'd joked about it before and i very expressly told them not to do it. as far as i'm concerned, i purchased that bike unlike 99.9% of people who stole their bikes off the street and it was my property. upon my leaving denmark i specifically gave it as a gift to someone coming to study in copenhagen. until it reached that person, it was and is mine.

i can't begin to understand these children who find glee in destroying bicycles, throwing them down escalators and planning to throw them off roofs. they did a great job of waiting until my back was turned to go against my wishes. if there's one thing i am grateful for since leaving exchange it's been the respite from the boundless immaturity of the idiots that i had to deal with on a daily basis.

new do

i made the fatal mistake of allowing my mother to trim my bangs this morning. she cut them waay too short and i had no choice but to spread them into straight bangs. i was legitimatelly pissed for about ten minutes.

highly recommend

the double cream blueberry pie at marie callender's is so so amazing

ilovecph

back in los angeles. god this place is ugly.

the end

last hours in copenhagen.

i need to stop crying.

i sat in nyhavn for the last time today and my heart felt like it was falling through the floor.

danish

my favorite danish phrase

det var så lidt

you're welcome

literally, it was so little

can't eat my food

i just had a goodbye brunch at den blå hund and the little pickles on my plate had the exact texture of shingles and i had to actively keep myself from gagging just from looking at them. i had to hide them under my salad.

reminds me of the time when i went to the carnival in Fælledparken and I was sitting and eating horrible thai food on a blanket on grass. sitting across from me was a troupe of about five girls who all had dreads and seeing all of their hair while trying to eat made my stomach turn.